Reflections of Shadows
by Rilian
Summary: The last of the Digidestined is dying. And the last moments of his life are spent looking back upon the distant world they left behind.


I don't own Digimon --------------------------------------------------  
I died on Saturday night. Sonia and I had hosted a dinner party earlier that evening. The main course had been orange-flavored duck with a delightful sherry I had picked up from the wine shop that afternoon. Jonah, Ichigo, and the Twins were there, accompanied by their spouses and the entire horde of little granddarlings. A few old partners of mine stopped by to remind me how dull they were and how glad I was to be retired. Annie Takaishi was radiant though, her brown hair flashed with gold and her eyes sparkled like sapphires. She had always been my favorite pupil throughout all my years of teaching at the University. She was the only student I ever imparted my secrets too, the only one who had ever seemed to grasp the magic behind the elemental force men call Law. And here she was now, positively glowing, the new partner at one of the most celebrated firms in London. And I thought she had never looked more beautiful.  
  
She had brought her new boyfriend with her, a football player with Arsenal. I found him cocky, brash, arrogant as sin, and far too concerned with how Annie interacted with the other male guests. I wondered; if her parents and godfather had been alive, if they would have appreciated the irony.  
  
After most of the duck and all of the sherry had been consumed, Sonia and I showed everyone out. Each of the granddarlings was given an envelope with (by their childhood standards) a small fortune inside, simply as a reminder to their parents that we could, and would, spoil our grandchildren rotten just to pass the day.  
  
Sonia and I, feeling quite satisfied with ourselves, fixed a pair of gin and tonics as we watched the news. We bemoaned the endless string of problems in the world. And I pumped my fist upon hearing that the Giants had won again; no way would they lose the title this year. After the weather, I took the new big blue pills my young idiot doctor had prescribed in the hopes of finally doing something about my prostate. And then I turned to my lovely wife of forty-three years and told her goodnight, and I gave her a kiss on the cheek. Then I changed into the flannel pajamas one of the children had given me for my birthday and I got into bed. The second my head hit the pillow, I felt a heaviness settle on my chest, and I knew I was going to die.  
  
I never felt afraid. My mind raced backwards through my long years of life until I was a boy again. And I remembered everything; the smell of the grass, the flickering look of the horizon, the sunsets of fire, and the nights camped out under strange new constellations that I had never thought to learn. I remembered the pride, and the joy, the pain and fear, and the battles, and the heartbreak. And I remembered all of the amazing, beautiful, and horrible things I had seen. I remembered my best friend. And I wanted to weep because I had forgotten them.  
  
All my memories of that time had faded, been put in a cardboard box with middle school arithmetic and the feel of a kendo stick in my hands, and packed away in the dustiest corner of my mind. As I had grown up it was harder and harder to remember those days, until all I could remember were Takeru's books, and the idiotic children's show that had oozed from them. And those weren't real memories. They were scrubbed, washed, and polished in order to be suitable for a wider audience. There were some things only we would have been able to understand, some things we would never want to be told, things TK especially would never have wanted anyone to know. There were things we all wanted to forget. And as time marched on, the Digital World became just another story, as make-believe as Narnia or Prydain.  
  
It occurred to me that I was the last one. All memory, true memory, of the Digital World would die with me. Everything I had learned, and seen, and felt would be lost for all time.  
  
It's strange, but I never thought much about dying back then, and I don't know if the others ever did either. We came through so many battles by the skin of our teeth, we cheated death so many times that I almost believed we couldn't die, not there.  
  
Matt proved me wrong of course, during that last desperate trip through the gate. I can still see that moment; his body stretched out on the mud and the rain pouring all around. TK knelt down next to him and put his hand over the wound, trying not to believe it was real. I think that was the last time I ever saw him cry. I turned to look at our final enemy. I watched his eyes go slack as he crumbled into tiny bits of data that dissolved on the wind. I remember his name, but it deserves to be forgotten. That night he stole whatever was left of our youth.  
  
The years passed, and everyone's thoughts became concerned only with the human world. We went to school, got jobs, married, had children, we fell in and out of touch dozens upon dozens of times. We began to grow old and die.  
  
Mimi was thirty-two and a star of the stage when she died of breast cancer, it happened so fast, spread so easily, there was nothing anyone could do but watch her waste away. Jyou raised their three children on his own, and did a damn fine job of it. But he was incredibly lonely once they grew up. He went back to the medical school where he got his doctorate and became a teacher, like me. He was right in the middle of a lecture on cystic fibrosis when a blood vessel in his brain burst and he crumpled to the floor, a piece of chalk still clutched in his hands, twenty years and six months after Mimi died.  
  
Ken was forty-four and one of the top men in the Tokyo police department when he decided to leave his office for lunch and walk to a little corner café he had frequented as a rookie. He took two bites out of his tuna melt before a fourteen year old kid, high as a kite on crystal methane tried to hold the place up. Ken drew his gun and told the kid to put his hands up. The kid spun around on him, and by all rights Ken should have had a shot, but the instincts in him were dulled by years behind a desk, the willingness to pull the trigger blunted. He was shot three times in the chest and died in the back of an ambulance stuck in traffic.  
  
Miyako was devastated, she had been asleep that morning when he left for work, and for years she was haunted by this fact. She worked hard to see all five of their kids through college. And by the time that was all done with she was too tired to do much else. So one afternoon she fell asleep in her favorite rocking chair watching her soap operas and never woke up.  
  
I had lunch with TK and Kari the day they died. Annie was going with some of her friends to Hawaii the summer before her senior year of high school. And TK and Kari thought it would be a perfect opportunity to take some time off for themselves and go see Europe again. I happened to be going to Hong Kong on business that day so we all had lunch together at the airport bar. I can't even remember what we talked about. Annie had the earliest flight, and we watched her plane become a speck in the sky before I walked TK and Kari to their gate.  
  
"Tell Sonia that we all have to go have dinner when we get back," Kari told me, and then they boarded a plane that fell apart over the Mediterranean Sea.  
  
Annie lived with Davis and his wife after that. They had never been able to have children of their own. So instead they threw all their time and energy into their restaurant chain, taking it from one small stand in a bad part of Tokyo to an international corporation that made millions. But they made room in their lives for Annie, and she adored them for it. She was interning for me her first year of grad school when Davis was killed, hit by a car when he went down to the store for the paper one bright Sunday morning.  
  
Izzy died of lung cancer a year or so after that. The constant pressure of being the world's foremost computer programmer pushed him to three packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day. He never married. I tried to make it to his funeral, but some thing or other came up and I missed it. Things always come up when you're young, it's only when you're old and feeble that you have time.  
  
Tai and Sora were the worst though. They were taking their five year old son to the zoo when a gas main ruptured just a dozen feet from where they were walking. Such a waste.  
  
There had been many times when I had wished that the silly, happy endings TK dreamed up for us had come true. We were young once, we were heroes, a family. And now all that was left was a dying old man. It didn't seem fair.  
  
A tear rolled down my cheek even as a numbness spread through my chest. I closed my eyes and I heard their voices echoing up from the past. I saw their faces. And there was a moment when I could swear I felt eight years old again, full of fresh life and wonder.  
  
I heard a sound like the clinking of metal plates. And slowly I opened my eyes for the last time, already knowing he would be there. He emerged from the shadows slowly, golden armor glinting in the small traces of light. A scarred, curved claw reached up to me, and I heard his raspy voice.  
  
"Iori, it's time to go home." 


End file.
